Fences Are Real Cunts

It was morning when Monterey awoke to the familiar sound of the breeze, the birds, and the sun rushing through his eyelids like the blood in his veins. He rolled over on his filthy Styrofoam mat and tiredly groaned, frustrated that another day had found him. Despite his best efforts to hide, he couldn’t keep running from the advent of another box in the expired calendar which dangled by his mat.

Sitting up, he reached for his pouch of tobacco and began to roll a cigarette. Behind him, separated by a large piece of cardboard, his roommate Felt sat in a rusty folding chair spreading peanut butter onto an old apple he had found somewhere. Monterey lit his cigarette and stood so that he could see Felt better.

‘Morning, son.” Felt said, absently. He bit into the apple.

“Where’d ya find that?” Monterey wasn’t quite hungry yet, but he would be eventually. The hunger usually wasn’t so bad, not for himself. The fact of the matter was, however, that if you were afraid of germs, being homeless was not for you.

Starving to death in an era of wanton wastefulness and careless self indulgent littering was unacceptable.

“The tree’s finally starting to produce.” Felt said, nodding his head towards the far end of the courtyard.

Across the concrete littered with used needles, cigarette butts, and fast food wrappers, a sickly apple tree swayed in the wind with the green buds of fruits hanging low. Soon they’d start to fall and we’ll have to get more peanut butter, Monterey thought.

“Once they begin to fall, that means fall, and we won’t be able to sleep outside anymore.” Felt stood up suddenly and tossed the apple to Monterey’s hands.

“That’s fine. Maybe some housing will come down by then.” They were always waiting for subsidized housing to come down. That was always their plan, distant and far off in the safe future, where it may be bleak, but at least it was unstained by the fuck ups of the present. Eventually, spring would come, the bearer of hope and warmth, and they would sleep outside for a season or two, forgetting honey coated notions of roofs and walls.

“Worse comes to it,” Felt said, getting groggily to his feet, “we can just pry off some of these boards,” he motioned to the sealed windows and doors around them, “and take shelter inside. ‘Least it’s a roof over our heads.”

“As long as you’re under my roof, you’re going to follow my rules.” Monterey joked.

Felt didn’t smile. “We’re not under any roofs right now. That means no rules, huh?”

“You know how I feel about rules, man.”

Felt sighed. “Authority is such a cunt. I’m going to rush. You want to get loaded before you have to work?”

“No, I’m not working today.”

“Oh.” Felt began cooking up in an old aluminum can.

“I’m going to town to do some errands, then I’ll come back and nod off.” Monterey said, but thinking of getting high was making him lick his lips.

“Very well. It’s your existence. Hey, try to find some Gatorade?” Felt looked up hopefully. He always drank Gatorade after coming back to earth.

“I’m not making any promises.”

“A promise can be such a cunt.” Felt said, as he began tapping his arm, looking for a fat vein.

Monterey turned away quickly before he became completely subdued in its face, in its smell. Slinging his worn pack over a shoulder, he grabbed his black shoes and carried them quickly away from their camp, careful to avoid the mess scattered on the concrete. Weaving through the corridor between the boarded up windows of the old buildings, he stopped to pick up a used needle and heave it at one of the pieces of plywood keeping them from shelter. It stuck in the wood like a dart.

Reaching a chain link fence, Monterey stopped to slip on his shoes. Looking through the fence, he tossed his pack over, then placed his fingers through the links in the fence. Across the field, he watched the breeze softly move the grass and trees.

Before jumping the fence, he hesitated, letting his fingers rest upon the holes between the links. Everything was a fence in his life. And as his roommate would so eloquently state, fences could be such cunts.

But they could be jumped. No matter if they even had that sharp razor wire on top, they could easily be defied. Like crowns of security resting upon the summit, he could stand upon it with the razors digging into his soft shins, watching both sides of the divide at once. He could see the familiar and the failures behind him, and the almost elaborate clarity of Eden in from of him.

But even then, he could only take a few breaths as he gazed across all that was and all the could have been. For soon his lack of balance would over power him more than the divide, and he could merely hope to swing his back leg high enough to clear the wire, and avoid crashing back into the known and present failures. But rather he aimed to swing over in Eden and smile before the ground would knock it off his face.

Regards, Esortnom